2025: One Last Fling…?
Enjoy it while it lasts…
At the Wildlife Dreams hide in Estonia
This is my last blog post of 2025, so here’s a quick review of the year…
Trips
Dark Waters
The past year has been a game of two halves. Up until June, I went on various photographic trips. After June, I didn’t go on any! And that, quite simply, was because I ran out of money. I hope that’ll change in future, and I still have one or two trips planned for 2026, but we’ll see. Fingers crossed…
All in all, I went on three photographic trips—plus a nice week in Salzburg and Vienna with my friend Jason! That involved spending a week at five different destinations:
Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe (March)
Krootuse, Estonia (April-May)
Laikipia North, Kenya (May)
Laikipia East, Kenya (May)
Tsavo West National Park, Kenya (June).
You can find a brief description of all my trips since I became a wildlife photographer in my Photographic Trips post, but here’s a summary of the ones I took in 2024.
Bomani Tented Camp, Zimbabwe
Lion Walk
Gallery: link
Blog: Kings and Rollers
Imvelo Safaris kindly invited me to be their resident photographer for a week in March 2025, and I enjoyed the whole experience. It was my first time visiting Hwange National Park and only my second time in Zimbabwe. The staff were very helpful and friendly, the accommodation was fine and I virtually had the place to myself!
The only problem was that it was the low season, so big game sightings were few and far between. There was so much water around that the animals didn’t have to congregate at the waterholes, so it was hard to see anything apart from the local lion pride and a few birds.
I did my best under the circumstances, but I didn’t even manage to take one five-star shot. This one of a male lion was probably the best of a bad bunch…!
Wildlife Dreams Hide Complex, Estonia
Finch Fight
Gallery: link
Blog: Hide and Seek
Have you ever been to a wildlife photography hide? I’ve just spent a week at the Wildlife Dreams Hide Complex in Estonia, and I ended up with a lot of pictures of angry birds! The most common species was the European greenfinch, but there were also marsh harriers, common buzzards and a lesser spotted eagle. I was hoping for wolves and bears, too, but the only animals I saw were a weasel, a fox and a roe deer…
My photographic trips usually take me to Africa on safari, but this was a special case. Phil Gould had initially contacted me last year on LinkedIn, asking if I’d check out his new hide in Estonia. I was happy to oblige, but the deal fell through, so Phil had to find another location. Eventually, he managed to find one and build his hide, so we were back in business!
Laikipia Wilderness, Kenya
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Gallery: link
Blog: Beautiful Darkness
In Laikipia, black leopards matter. That’s why I spent a week at Laikipia Wilderness. I wanted to see Giza, a female with a melanistic variant in her genes that means her coat is almost pure black, with only slight traces of the rosettes that would usually be visible on her flanks. Her name means ‘Beautiful Darkness’, but she only comes out at night, and there was no guarantee of being able to see her, let alone photograph her. Was I going to get lucky? Let’s find out…
Kicheche Laikipia, Kenya
Long Horn
Gallery: link
Blog: Rhino Heaven
Everyone talks about how hard it is to find leopards, but what about rhinos?! I’ve been on over 500 game drives in nine different African countries, and I’ve hardly ever seen them. And that’s the main reason why I decided to visit Kicheche Laikipia—or Rhino Heaven!
Finch Hattons, Kenya
The Spotter
Gallery: link
Blog: Denys the Menace
Finch Hattons is a luxury safari camp in Tsavo West National Park, Kenya. It’s named after Denys Finch-Hatton MC, a nobleman, soldier, pilot and Edwardian big game hunter who was educated at Eton and Oxford. Denys wasn’t really a ‘menace’—unless you happened to be one of the animals he shot! In fact, he became one of the early pioneers of photographic safaris when he hosted the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) in 1928 and 1930.
Workshops & Lessons
It’s been a pretty good year for workshops and lessons. I always enjoy helping people take better pictures, so it’s been great to meet so many budding wildlife photographers and see them improve. I also appreciate their feedback, which has always been very positive!
Workshops
I managed to do one more photography workshop in January at the London Wetland Centre with Handmade Workshops, and when they decided not to market them any more, I did five more on my own—one of which took place at my local tennis club!
I’ve now got into the routine of holding a workshop on the last Saturday of every month. If you'd like to come along, you can find all the details on my Workshops page. It always shows the next two events, but if you’re not sure when you can make it or you’re buying one for a friend or relative, you can always postpone it to a later date.
Lessons
In addition, I taught a few private clients over the course of a few weekends—especially a Chinese family living in Highgate. I taught the 11-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter once a week for a month. The idea was to help them take photos good enough to enter the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The deadline was 4 December, and we didn’t have much time, but you can judge their work for yourself in the gallery (above).
I hope they do well in the competition, but whatever the result, I’d like to continue teaching them. If I can’t afford to go to Africa anymore, I can at least pass on my knowledge to the next generation…!
Awards
Bear Gills
I didn’t enter many photo contests this year. That was partly to save money and partly because I hadn’t taken many new photos that I thought had a chance of winning! However, I did have a bit of success as Bear Gills (above) won the Top Photo Awards Wildlife Photography Contest 2025.
In addition, the Artlimes gallery chose several of my wildlife prints as their 'Featured Products', including Kingfisher Airlines, Lion Eyes, Here's Lookin' At You and Sky Fall.
Finally, various Facebook and LinkedIn groups selected my images as their cover photos. It changes by the week, but the ones still featured are Bear Gills on Born to be wild - Wildlife Photography and Little Brown Job on International Photography Group and Professional Photographers Community.
You can see an up-to-date, chronological list of selected awards on the About page.
Print Sales
Teenage Kicks
I didn’t sell a single framed print this year, which was rather disappointing. The last one I sold was Teenage Kicks (above). I took the shot on my trip to Kicheche in December 2024, and one of the guests I met over there bought it—which worked out nicely!
To be fair, I didn’t hold any exhibitions this year, but I didn’t even get any enquiries when I had a stall at my local tennis club’s Christmas Fair!
Stock Sales
Eddie the Penguin
Fortunately, my stock sales are still growing, and after eight months of the current financial year, I’ve now had more sales on Shutterstock and Alamy than I did in the whole of 2024-25! Eddie the Penguin (above) is still my most popular photo, having been downloaded 3,903 times, followed by Easy Does It (1,161), Family Values (629) and Bear Gills (541).
Stock sales are a nice way of ‘making money while you sleep’, and I still upload 100 images every Friday to 10 microstock agencies—although I’m about to run out of decent photos! These are my top five agencies by sales value:
Adobe
Shutterstock
iStock (Getty Images)
Image Source/Connect Images (formerly Design Pics)
Alamy
In addition, I occasionally get royalties when my photos appear in the national or international press. I submit my work to a couple of news agencies, Solent News and Caters News, and that leads to the odd payment of £100 or so. The only problem is knowing which shots to submit. Publication is based on ‘newsworthiness’ rather than artistic merit, so it can be a bit tricky!
Writing
The book that never was…
Book Launch
My big project this year was to crowdfund a book on wildlife photography. I was approached by a guy called Adrian Hatherall from Ink & Roller, and he initially gave me the idea. We did a lot of work on the concept, including running the numbers and asking Heather Bowen to produce a few mock-up images (above), and then I spent a couple of weeks writing the book.
Unfortunately, not enough people signed up in advance, so the project is on hold. Adrian’s currently looking for sponsorship, but he hasn’t yet managed to do any deals. That’s a shame, of course, but we’ll keep on trying…
Blog
I still publish posts every Saturday on Capture the Moment!, and I’ve been quite lucky recently in selling guest posts to various writers and online publishers. I make around £60 a pop, and it means I don’t have to bother with trying to think of a new topic to write about myself!
My blog posts are the most popular pages on my website, which is now getting over 14,000 unique visitors a month. That’s a month-on-month increase of 23% and a year-on-year jump of 164%!
Capture the Moment! gets 353 pageviews a month, and these are my most popular posts:
My Top 10 Birds (1,487 pageviews in last 30 days)
How I Photograph Birds (1,007)
XBotGo Chameleon Review (417)
Social Media
As usual, I post my Shot of the Week on social media on Sunday mornings. In addition, I post pictures and videos every morning on all my social media accounts (except Flickr, Pinterest and Vero):
Facebook: facebook.com/nickdalephotography
Instagram: instagram.com/nickdalephotography
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ndale/
Pinterest: pinterest.com/nickdalephotography
Threads: threads.net/@nickdalephotography
TikTok: tiktok.com/@nickdalephotography
YouTube: youtube.com/@nickdalephotography
Verdict
In a Finch Hattons safari truck
It’s been pretty tough trying to grow my photography business this year. I enjoyed the trips I went on from January to June, especially getting the chance to see the black leopard. However, I didn’t get any five-star images from any of them, so I didn’t get much sense of progress—especially when my book launch fell flat!
On the plus side, my stock photography business is doing quite well, and I’ve enjoyed teaching all my photography students. I take great satisfaction from the lessons and workshops I lead at the London Wetland Centre and elsewhere, and I hope I can inspire other wildlife photographers to improve and enjoy their hobby even more.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.
If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.
